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An idea that I really like is to do what countries like Singapore and the Scandinavian countries do: create a public sovereign wealth fund, and then do what States like Alaska do: divert the dividends from the fund directly to the people.

Alaska's Permanent Fund is only allowed to invest in Alaskan companies and is "only" $75B in size (https://www.alaskajournal.com/2021-02-24/fund-continues-bull...), and even then an Alaskan resident would have received $2,000 in 2015 simply for existing: https://pfd.alaska.gov/Division-Info/Summary-of-Applications...

By scaling up the size and scope of the fund, you can conceivably get to a place where the dividend can work out to $10k+ per person per year.

I think one way to populate the fund is require the assets purchased by the Fed during bailouts to be held by the sovereign wealth fund.

The thing I worry about Universal Income, which the Alaska situation seems to be, is that there will be a bifurcation of people who need the UI and spend it every month and the people who put it into an investment. I guess if the checks keep coming it is not an issue, but if there is an event where the UI has to stop there will be a lot of pain. I think some sort of forced savings, that is only able to drawn upon at a certain age or for certain catastrophes is required. I guess you can only prevent people from being stupid so much, but what sometimes seems stupid is just people doing what the have to, to survive.

I think the sovereign wealth funds have a lot of the same problems the social security has. Politicians will borrow against it and never pay it back. From what I have heard some middle eastern countries had a sovereign wealth fund that was mismanaged, I guess if you have a competent government it is fine, but you don't always get to decide that.

Overall, I agree with you that both of these are a good way to distribute society's prosperity to the people.

Totally agree that the devil is in the implementation details which can make or break the idea as a whole.

One potential way to mitigate these risks is to have the fund be set up with a strict breakdown, say, 20% of the dividends can go into a pot that the government can use for discretionary spending, and 80% goes to the people equally divided as a dividend, and the only way to change this percentage is with a 2/3s majority. The percentage split and the consensus threshold are certainly debatable.

> By scaling up the size and scope of the fund, you can conceivably get to a place where the dividend can work out to $10k+ per person per year.

We've done that, except the dividends to go to a few rich families instead of to everyone.

Where have we done that? Keep in mind that we're talking about sovereign wealth funds funding a universal dividend; the closest we have to that is Alaska's fund, which provides an equal dividend to everyone regardless of income.

I agree. I would go even farther. I think that governments should be funded by investment funds that are financed by revenue from resource utilization. Ideally, the investments are in local businesses and resource development. I am from Alaska. If Alaska had also set up a government fund at the same time to finance government the state would not be in financial trouble now. Alaska didn't do that and oil revenue was directly used to fund government. Now that oil revenue has decreased substantially there is nothing to fall back on.

The greatest tool for building wealth is time. That is an asset that organizations have that individuals do not. Look at the endowments of top tier universities. There is no reason that governments can't do the same and benefit from the long lifespan of a non-human entity.

This has the benefit of aligning government interests with the interests of the people. It also makes government more supportive than punitive as revenue only increases by cultivating an environment for business to flourish.

> Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income"

Is it clear that the causation is only in that direction? I am not familiar with economic history back into the 40s and 50s when a lot of women started entering the workforce (note more than 25% of the civilian workforce were women already in 1945 [1]), but could it have been that it's partly the other way around?

In other words, how much of "it is becoming more difficult for a family to survive on one income" caused the need for "more women entering the workforce en mass"?

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-i...

>> Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income"

That's kind of expected. Our society/economy/marketing are designed to get people to spend 100 percent of their income or more. So when families get 2 incomes it causes inflation or enables people to buy more stuff (iPhones) or whatever until they're spending the same percentage. Aside from not actually saving the extra income, the obvious downside is to screw single people by raising prices without raising their income.

No idea what the solution is. I think in general we need better ways to save for retirement and also need to reduce the cost of living/rent. Doing both those things together seems to go against nature - if people have it they will spend it. BTW by "people" I mean in general, there are obviously individuals who live differently.

>That's kind of expected. Our society/economy/marketing are designed to get people to spend 100 percent of their income or more. So when families get 2 incomes it causes inflation or enables people to buy more stuff (iPhones) or whatever until they're spending the same percentage. Aside from not actually saving the extra income, the obvious downside is to screw single people by raising prices without raising their income.

I do not think this has much to do with it.

The much larger sources of volatility would be massive increase in labor supply due to other countries coming "online", women entering workforce (this might be overstated), immigrants entering workforce. And all of that was coupled with huge advances in automation, namely computer software, and then the internet. Although advances in farming and manufacturing automation cannot be overstated either.

Both labor supply and labor demand curves shifted the price of labor down for "unskilled" labor.

The other societal impact that is large is women gaining independence, therefore impacting the couples markets. Due to our biology or sociology or whatever, typically, people are going to seek out mates in equal or higher socioeconomic classes with more economic stability. This results in high earners pairing with high earners, competing with other dual high earning couples.

Finally, birth control reduces need to form families while still satisfying biological urges. I know quite a few people sitting out the family thing because they were unable to find an acceptable partner per their requirements. I think this is being seen in general in all developed countries via the plummeting birth rates.

All in all, people have a lot more information available than they used to, and a lot more control of their bodies, and the conclusion for many is the cost:benefit:volatility ratio of starting families is not worth it.

It's hard to convince people to spend responsibly when the government spends irresponsibly, spirals into debt and lets the money printers run overtime.

Did the lifestyle of people actually decrease from the 60s to today? I don’t think that is possibly true. Pretty much no American man would choose to go back in time and live in the 1960s (at the age of 25) given the extra purchasing power... or any intervening time in between.

I think the fact that people are trying to "Make America Great Again" means a lot of people would go back in time, especially men.

There are some rose-colored glasses involved, of course, but there are plenty of people who would trade some extra purchasing power for a better pace of life, more social cohesion, and the status that sibling-post mentions.

People care about status at least as much as their raw level of purchasing power.

A 25-year-old American man in 1960 had more status in society than a similar man today.

The cost of living went up because households with two incomes outbid households with one income for scarce goods like housing.

I'm not sure how it could have played out differently. Women have always, always worked to support themselves and their families. But the invention of household labor saving devices freed up enormous amounts of time that would have been spent primarily in the household. Of course those women would look for additional opportunities to support their families. It's the same story as men moving from farm labor to factory labor as farm labor became increasingly mechanized.

> It seems to me the increases of efficiency should allow all people a minimum quality life(...), no matter their contribution to society. I think this can turn people that are a strain on the system to contributors

How would they be contributors? I'm thinking maybe you mean that they will participate economically (buying stuff and making more babies). Is that really a good thing though, to have people who do nothing to contribute besides consume things--especially from a climate standpoint? It seems unnatural to me, because nature rewards competition, survival of the fittest, etc..

no, I mean if someone doesn't have a place to live it will be harder for them to get a job or go to school to get skills to get a job. There is still competition if there isn't people dying in the streets

Ah ok, I misunderstood your point then. I had seen other discussions on HN about UBI and people proclaiming that it should be ok if people don't want to work at all

Freelance can create a lot of schedule freedom.